


The Scars We Gather

by Scotty1609



Series: Old Stories, Old Scars [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Amputee Hunk (Voltron), Angst, Angst and Feels, Anxiety Attacks, Blind Lance (Voltron), Blindness, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Body Modification, Brain Damage, Brainwashing, Burned Keith (Voltron), Burns, Character Study, Cyborg Shiro (Voltron), Druid Pidge (Voltron), Future Fic, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hurt Everybody, Hurt No Comfort, Keith and Shiro are Siblings, Like literally everybody almost dies, Loss of Limbs, Lotor is a Creep, M/M, Major Character Injury, Panic Attacks, Past Brainwashing, Please Don't Hate Me, Please Kill Me, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Serious Injuries, Space family, like seriously, paladins as a family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 10:26:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9651851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scotty1609/pseuds/Scotty1609
Summary: The Paladins are fighting a centuries old force of evil. It's going to take a few years to win. These are the scars they gather while on the path of war.





	

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: Blood, gore, language, Lotor is a creep, blood drinking, amputation, mentions of self-harm, body horror, body dysphoria, lots of angst, just... this is a fucked up fic. Not gonna lie.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy the pain!

******One year, four months, two weeks.**

 

Keith was the first to get his ' _character-defining scar_ ', as Lance dubbed them. Shiro disapproved of the term, but he couldn't come up with one that fit any better, so he eventually stopped berating the younger paladins for using the term.

Each of the paladins, over their year or so fighting to rescue the multiverses, gathered many, many scars. Cuts and scrapes that never healed right, once-broken bones that creak when it gets too cold in the void of space, bare patches where hair should be but had never grown back from burns. But each of them had _one specific scar_.

Keith's was one of the more obvious ones.

They had been fighting to rescue a race of peoples- the Dryzikards- from their own planet. What was once a dormant 'volcano', or else the closest term the paladins could find for it, the entire planet came back to life and was about to implode. Keith, Pidge, and Shiro were on evac duty, while Lance and Hunk were doing everything in their power to delay the planet's demise: freezing over lava flows, pushing massive chunks of obsidian into magma pits to stopper them up, anything they could think of.

Just as the planet was about to go up in flames, they finished evacuating. Cries of relief and congradulations were shared with each other, and they all loaded up into their lions to head back to the Castleship.

Until Keith's ears started twitching.

Coming to find that he was Galra was initially a shock to the red paladin, but over time- and with immense help from his teammates (specifically Allura and Hunk)- he came to accept it. And it was at moments like this- when his highly sensitive ears picked up the screeching cries of a child Dryzikard stuck beneath a collapsed hut- that Keith came to _appreciate_ it.

“Keith!” Lance had screamed over the communicators when Keith leaped out of his lion. “The _hell_ do you think you're doing?!”

“There's a kid!” Keith had called back. He jumped over streams of lava, ducking under flying debris and using his helmet to filter the ash out of his lungs.

The little Dryzikard- a girl with blue scales and orange feathers popping off where human ears would be- had sobbed upon seeing him. Her cries were covered over by coughs, the ash from the volcano-planet filling her lungs. Keith immediately turned off his communicator and placed his helmet over the child's head, lifting her into his arms and sprinting back to the red lion-

A massive chunk of debris, taller and wider than he was and coated in flames, slammed into his back and knocked him to the ground.

Keith tried to shield the girl. He really did. But flames were eating away at his skin, burning his hair and melting his flesh. He _screamed_. Wrapping the child up in his arms, Keith screamed until his throat was raw, kicking at the rock until it rolled off of him down a cliff side. He couldn't move. He could hardly breathe. Spots were appearing in his eyes, white spots that were blinding and making needles stab his corneas. The red lion roared louder than ever, swollowing up her paladin and the child in his arms.

He was in a healing pod for three weeks.

They all took turns being with him- there was a longstanding, unspoken rule between them all that _no one_ was allowed to wake up from cryo alone- but Lance and Shiro stayed the longest. Upon reaching the two week mark, Lance _broke_. He sobbed and slammed his fists against the floor, shouting to the air at the top of his lungs. His knuckles had started bleeding from the force he was using on the metallic ground. That was how Shiro found him, bloody and screaming and sobbing.

Neither man slept that night.

When Keith emerged, the first thing he asked was: “The girl?”

His voice was raw, choked. He sounded like he had smoked a pack of cigarettes every day for the past ten years of his life.

The look on Lance's face told Keith just what had happened to the girl.

Lance and Shiro helped Keith to the communal showers. They had been forced to throw him in the healing pods without fixing him up first- there wasn't even enough time to change him into a cryo-suit- and he was covered in ash and sulfur. When Keith began to peel off the underlayers of his paladin armor, he let out a sob.

Coran said that he was lucky. Seventy-five percent of his body was covered in burn scars, including the entire left side of his face. But he was alive, and his lungs and heart were still functioning despite the massive amount of debris and toxins he had inhaled, so he was _lucky_.

Keith had to bite his lip to keep from wailing in front of his brother and lover. Lance pulled the younger man into an embrace in the showers, caressing Keith's hair and kissing his neck as Shiro gently scrubbed away the gray ashes from his brother's shoulders and back.

 

…

 

**One year, ten months, three weeks.**

 

Hunk was the next to fall prey to his character-scar.

It was another rescue mission, only this time it was not a natural disaster plaguing the civilization. Rather, the moon- not far from Arus- was under attack from the Galra. A below-freezing tundra, Yippori was suffering from an ice-age that had lasted for longer than Zarkon had been in power. But beneath the thick ice of the planet was its core, a massive crystal that was borne of pure quintessence.

Hunk and Pidge were the ones to face the Galra. It hadn't been on purpose, oh no- it was supposed to be the others who ran into Lotor and the evil prince's fleet. Hunk and Pidge were horribly out-numbered, pressed to the edge of a precipice that led to certain death. They fought valiantly, but the precipice began to crack under their weight. Hunk had grabbed Pidge by the back collar of her uniform and launched her body away from the edge.

And it collapsed.

The yellow paladin could hear Pidge's horrified screaming the entire way down. He couldn't remember much- he was blessed in that way- except for the _crack_ that his head made when it came in contact with the hard ice below.

It was a combination of the Galra fighting above him and the already unsteady cliffside that caused the avalanche. One of the other things Hunk could remember was the screaming. He heard Lance calling his name, Keith demanding Pidge give them answers, Shiro trying to calm them all down and simultaneously get Hunk to “Stay awake, Hunk, _stay awake_.”

He passed out.

It must have been hours later that he awoke. The other paladins were digging, digging, digging with their lions, trying to get to him beneath the snow and ice. Hunk's helmet had kept him from suffocating, but his armor overall wasn't able to keep him warm. He couldn't feel his legs or his fingers, and his eyelids and lips couldn't move. In later months, Hunk and Lance would jokingly refer to Hunk's time beneath the ice as 'the Titanic' or '127 hours', after those old movies they made the team watch with them. But at the time, while Hunk was lying there, unmoving, brain working too sluggishly for him to even panic, there was no humor about the situation. Hunk had heard horror stories about frostbite before. He knew about it all- the gangrene, the blood clots, and- in the most horrible cases- loss of limbs.

But, growing up on an island country, Hunk had never been instilled with any fears of cold weather. It had just never applied to him. He was used to warm sun, sandy beaches, and lots of sunburns. Frostbite burns, he came to find, were much more painful.

He passed out again before the others got to him. It was a blissful relief, mostly because his freezing brain wasn't able to process that passing out would probably bring death. Unconsciousness just felt... peaceful. Like sleeping. And he was already so thoroughly frost-bitten, that he didn't even feel cold.

Hunk fell out of a cryo-pod five weeks later. Keith and Lance caught him, of course, but Hunk found it odd that he wasn't able to stand up. His legs weren't working right. The healing pod should have taken care of that. Still in a daze from being in stasis for more than a month, the yellow paladin blinked up at his friends and asked them why he couldn't stand. Lance's eyes were full of tears, and he had to walk away from the situation. Shiro replaced him, and the black and red paladins sat Hunk down in a chair that Pidge had procured.

One of the worst outcomes of frostbite was loss of limbs. Hunk _knew_ that.

He just never thought it would happen to him.

Legs gone from the knees down, Hunk spent much of the next month in bed. Pidge and Coran had fashioned him a wheelchair of sorts to help him get around while they worked on his prosthetic legs- Altean tech, but with blueprints stolen from a cross-section of Shiro's arm- but Hunk ignored it. He slept and read books, ever so often allowing one of his friends into his room to chat.

It was only when Keith _snapped_ that Hunk came out of his misery.

“Yeah, you lost your legs,” Keith snarled, fists at his sides and scarred face focusing in on his teammate, “but you are still _you_ , Hunk! You're still the yellow paladin of Voltron, still our teammate, our residential therapist and cook- you're still. Our. _Friend_.”

Hunk showed emotion for the first time in nearly a month on that night. Keith held him close, allowing snot and tears to gather on his shirt, and whispered soft apologies in the yellow paladin's ears. Hunk put an end to the apologies by thanking Keith, taking his friend aback.

Keith helped Hunk wheel his way down to the laboratory that night, and Hunk sat on the floor with Pidge as the two worked on prototypes for his new legs.

 

…

 

**Two years, three months, one week.**

 

Lance tried to brush off his own scars. They weren't a big deal, he claimed. He was fine. He was still his loud-mouthed, confident self! Pidge and Keith were the only ones to call him on his bullshit, but they did so in as gentle a way as possible, helping Lance when he needed it and letting him flounder when necessary to learn. They couldn't keep holding him up in the water if they wanted him to learn to swim.

He and Shiro had been captured by the Galra. It was a dangerous mission- practically suicide, Coran had told them- but it was necessary to bring down Lotor and Haggar. They were to infiltrate a Galra base, find the control room, and update the virus Pidge had created into the mainframe. Of course, they hadn't planned on getting caught. But they were caught, along with shackled, knocked around a bit, and thrown into a cell. Shiro was emotionless the entire time, but Lance could _see_ the flashbacks through the glassy look his leader was sporting.

“Shiro-” Lance began to speak, to try and rip the black paladin from his comatose state, but he was interrupted when a familiar white-haired man appeared in front of their cell.

All long hair, purple skin, and red tattoos, Lotor was even crueler than his father. Lotor was more like Haggar in all honesty. He wasn't as focused on controlling Voltron as he was destroying Voltron's paladins.

When Lotor saw Shiro, he had grinned like a wicked cat. Lance, without a second though, leaped in front of his leader and snarled. “Try and take him.”

Lotor's grin grew even larger.

“Lance!” Shiro ground out. “No, Lance, I can take it. I've taken it before, I can-”

“ _Shiro_ ,” the blue paladin croaked, sending Shiro a _look_. “You've protected and taken care of all of us more than we can express. You- You've been a brother to me, Shiro... Just- just let _me_ take care of _you_ for once.”

Lance had expected to be dragged off to the gladiator arena. Maybe off to Haggar's laboratory. What he _hadn't_ expected was for Lotor to throw him to the ground right there and straddle his torso, clawed hands digging into the tender flesh of his face. Shiro roared and writhed against his bonds, swearing and cursing Lotor's birth and promising a torturous death for the prince. Lotor had merely thrown his head back and laughed as he tore Lance's eyes from their sockets.

The pain was unimaginable. Lance could feel Lotor's nails digging into his sclera, ripping up the tissue there and making blood vessels explode. The pain drowned out Shiro's screams, but wrought forth Lance's own. Blood soaked his eye sockets, falling down his cheeks like horrible red tears. Lance kicked and bucked his hips, trying to get away, get away, _getawaygetawaygetaway-_

Lotor leaned forward and gave kitten-licks to Lance's cheeks, drinking up the blood that resided there.

There was an explosion, and then suddenly Keith was there and was ripping Lotor's throat out with his teeth. Lance couldn't see it, but he could _hear_ it. He could hear the gurgling of the prince's dying breath, could hear the wet laugh that emerged from Lotor's mouth as he spoke his last words: “Your beloved... tastes _wonderful_.” A sickening _schlick_ told Lance that Keith had decapitated the man. Lance couldn't bring himself to care.

Unalike Keith and Hunk's scar-stories, Lance was awake the entire time. He felt someone lift him into their arms- Hunk, it was Hunk, he'd know those arms anywhere- and he could hear Pidge trying in vain to calm down both Keith and Shiro at the same time.

“Hey, buddy,” Hunk's tearful voice resounded in his ears. “How ya doin?”

“Mm... M'gonna hav' to come up w'th s'me good blind pick-up lines n'w... aren't I?”

Hunk laughed. It was a broken, miserable laugh that made Lance's stomach drop.

“I'm sure Keith would _love_ that.”

Lance was set upon Hunk's lap- which told him they were now in the yellow lion- and the engine-like roar Yellow let out announced that they were taking off. Lance's eyes- or what was left of them- were throbbing, sending daggers into his brain and making him dizzy. “H-Hun'...” he stammered, gaggin. “M'gon- m'gon puke-”

He leaned over to what he hoped was the side, aiming _not_ to get barf on his best friend, and let loose his lunch. His stomach retched until nothing was left in it, and then he dry-heaved some more. By the time he was done, there was sweat intermingling with the blood on his face, dried vomit on the corners of his lips. The yellow lion landed, and then Hunk was holding him close again. There came the sound of pounding footsteps as they exited the lion, and then hands were cupping Lance's face, a forehead pressed against his.

“L-Lance,” Keith choked out, “Oh _God_ , Lance-”

“E-Ey, Keit... Y-Y'know wha?”

“What?” Keith asked him, holding tightly to his hand as the paladins sprinted towards the cryo-chamber.

“Lingere... makes grea' braille...”

“God _dammit_ , Lance.”

He was in stasis for ten days, much less time than Hunk and Keith. He healed as best as could be, but the pods couldn't work miracles. His right eye was completely gone, an empty socket left, and his left had so much nerve-damage that he would never be able to see out of it again. Claw marks marred his cheekbones and forehead, but who was he to care when he couldn't even see them? Besides, he didn't need to worry about attracting the ladies anymore now that he had his purple floof of a boyfriend. He didn't care. He _didn't_.

And he _definitely_ did not cry himself to sleep in Keith's arms the night he got out of cryo, and Keith _definitely_ did not leave peppering kisses across his face, whispering sweet nothings until Lance fell into deep unconsciousness. Because Lance _definitely_ did. Not. Care.

 

…

 

**Two years, eleven months, 2 weeks**

 

Shiro didn't hear, see, or feel anything when he got his character-scar. He didn't even feel any pain. There was a flash of light and then nothing. Pitch black. He was floating in a void, weightless and thoughtless. He wasn't breathing, but his lungs didn't hurt. His mind was a blank slate, and he was at peace.

And then he woke up.

He was lying down on cold metal- who was that crouching above him? Was it _Matt-_ No, no it was Pidge. Her mouth was moving, but nothing was coming out. She was crying, sobbing in harsh rasps that shook her shoulders. Shiro tried to reach his arm up to wipe away her tears, but someone was holding him down. Something told him that he should have been in pain when he turned his head, but all he felt was numbness. And then there was red. Why was there red? His thoughts were muddled, and he could hardly see Keith's horrified face through the light sheen of red- it smelt like blood, was it blood?- that dripped over his eyes. The black paladin opened his mouth, tried to speak words of comfort, but nothing came out.

His eyes flickered shut, and someone shook him. Or at least, he _thought_ someone shook him. Everything was so numb, it was hard to tell.

“-IRO! SHIRO! STAY AWAKE! SHIR-”

“-IDGE! CAN'T THIS THING FLY ANY FAST-”

“SHIRO! _**SHIRO**_!”

He couldn't remember what had happened. He remembered the details leading up to it, though only vaguely. They were... on a Galra ship? No, not Galra. A slave-trader ship. All five of them had ducked into the green lion to sneak up on them, to liberate their captives. Shiro and Lance had gone in together, towards the west wing of the ship. Keith and Hunk had the right wing, and Pidge was air-support. He and Lance had just reached what they _thought_ was a cell, and Lance had blasted open the door...

Shiro's eyes flickered open when a hand smacked his face. Keith was staring down at him, eyes wet as he screamed. Shiro couldn't hear him anymore though. He couldn't hear anything besides the blood _whoosh_ ing through his ears.

...Lance had blasted open the door, and Shiro heard ticking. Eyes widening, Shiro shouted for Lance to run, to retreat.

A bomb.

There was a bomb. And they had no time.

Shiro summoned his shield and shoved Lance behind a supply crate, curling over the younger man and throwing his shield over Lance's head.

And that was when everything had gone black. But now he was lying on the floor of the green lion. Lance was sitting against the wall, clutching his bloody side as he gazed at Shiro with a curious mix of fear and awe. Hunk and Keith were both hovering over him, wrapping what Shiro guessed was cloth around his limbs, his torso, his neck, his head- was he really that badly injured?

His fingers twitched, feeling the thick pool of liquid that he was lying in.

Oh. It was blood.

Yeah, he was pretty bad off.

“ _Takashi_ ,” Keith's voice sounded directly in his ear. “Bro, _please_ -” a sob cut him off. “Please, just _stay with us_. Just a little longer, Takashi. Just a little longer, and you'll be okay. Alright? Just a little longer and we'll have you in a pod and you'll be _fine_ -”

He tried. Shiro really, really tried to stay awake, tried to make his little brother happy. But he couldn't do it... He was so, so tired. It was as if his body was working against itself, dragging him under a warm blanket and forcing him to fade away...

“ _ **TAKASHI**_!”

Shiro was so badly damaged, so horribly disfigured, that they _couldn't_ put him in a healing pod. His skull had been crushed in, his ribs were sticking out of his flesh alongside bits of intestines, his leg was blasted to bits and he was missing half of his flesh arm. If they had stuck him in the healing pod, everything would have healed _wrong_ , and they would have to re-break bones and cut open flesh to put everything back inside. So they set about doing surgery.

None of them were qualified, but they were determined. Allura and Hunk had a combined knowledge of anatomy and physiology that was enough to salvage what was left of Shiro, and Pidge and Coran did what they could with machines to fix up the rest. Lance, having 'O' negative blood, and Keith, being related to Shiro, both gave massive blood transfusions that left them loopy and exhausted.

After twelve hours of work, twelve hours of sodering metal to wires, grafting skin to iron, replacing torn organs with organic meshes and plastics- after twelve of the longest hours of the paladins' lives- Shiro was ready for cryo.

Three months went by before he stepped out.

The first thing Shiro noticed was that everything was tinged blue. And his friends were tinged red and yellow. Before he could open his mouth to ask, Hunk stammered out, “H-Heat vision! It- ah- it was the best we could do with such short timing, but we can replace it to make everything look more realistic if you want us to- and- and-”

“How much?” Shiro croaked, looking down at his body. They hadn't dressed him in a healing suit. They had no need to. Most of his body was covered in metal plates, his skin melding with glowing machine. He could _feel_ the chill of cold steel inside his body with every breath he took. It was painless of course, his team would never do something so permanent that would cause him pain, but he could still _feel_ it. Could feel the metal and gears and wires that permeated his system, ran through his body and made him... _inhuman_.

“...F-Fifty-two percent,” Hunk replied. “Roughly.”

Shiro looked down at his hands- both of them were prosthetic now. His right arm was still Galra- still purple lights and dark steel- but his left hand was Altean- white plating with a soft blue glow. “My... my heart? My brain?”

“Brain is still one-hundred percent organic!” Pidge reassured him, taking his hand gently in both of hers. “Your thick skull saved you there.”

“ _Pidge_!”

Shiro couldn't help but smile at the young woman, ruffling her hair. “Thanks.”

“No prob. Your heart-” she hesitated. “-Your heart is _mostly_ organic. We had to replace a valve, but it wasn't anything _too_ invasive.”

“Replacing a valve in my heart wasn't invasive?”

She blushed.

“What about the rest of my organs?”

Overall, they had to replace both of his kidneys, re-piece his liver and right lung back together, and supplant both of his eyes. As for his skeletal system, his entire scalp was now metal, as were half of his ribs and both of his legs. Shiro thanked them for saving his life, for helping him survive the un-survivable.

And then he retreated to his room and had a full-blown panic attack.

 

…

 

**Three years, eight month, three weeks**

 

Pidge was the only one who hadn't needed a cryo-pod for her defining scar. But it didn't make her recovery any easier.

The Galra had a firm grip on the multiverses. Pidge took down Sendak, they all got rid of Zarkon, Keith absolutely _decimated_ Lotor... And then there was Haggar. She wasn't the last one left, they knew. The Galra Empire was a hydra- cut one head off and three more appear. There would be more, but Haggar was their next target to incapacitate.

Pidge and Keith were sent on recon- easy. The green lion was equipped with invisibility panels, and the red lion was the fastest of them all. They would get in, get the info, and get out. Unfortunately, nothing ever went according to plan when it came to the paladins.

Keith came stumbling out of the red lion, bleeding profusely and puking up purple bile, three hours after the pair was scheduled to re-board the Castleship. “P-Pidge,” he groaned as they forced him into a healing pod. “Y-You've gotta- we need to- S-Shiro, _Pidge_ -”

“We'll get her,” Shiro promised his brother, stroking the younger man's hair. “Now rest.”

When Keith awoke five days later, they had yet to find Pidge.

The red and green paladins had been caught- something or someone had tipped off the Galra to their little mission- and were forced into a cell. They plotted and schemed, heads pressed together, and when a guard came by to lead them off to wherever, be it Haggar's lair or the gladiator pit, they attacked. Keith was injured in the firefight, and Pidge had ordered him to the lions. She was right behind him. She _was_. Keith had checked, double checked, _triple_ checked. She was there.

Until she wasn't. Until Keith boarded the red lion and turned around to see Pidge on the ground, two soldiers forcing her face into the dirt and slamming their weapons and feet into her small body. “PIDGE!” Keith stumbled towards the mouth of the red lion, but he was too late. Red took off back towards the Castleship without her paladin's permission, Keith roaring protests and kicking at the command console the whole way there.

When he got out of cryo, they still hadn't found her.

 _Six months_. Six months went by in which the paladins scoured the universe, taking on every Galra ship they encountered with hopes of finding their green paladin. Coming up on the far end of the sixth month, they had a possible hit. Someone tipped them off to a supply ship that supposedly had a human aboard. The paladins unleashed _hell_.

And Pidge was there. Lance was the first to find her, and when he did, she threw him across the room with a bolt of pink lightning.

Donning a deep red druid's robe, Pidge stood tall above her fellow paladins. Her eyes were a sickening yellow, scars marring her face. Red horizontal tattoos led from her forehead and down her cheeks, stopping just past her dry lips. Her hair had grown, matted with blood and dirt.

“P-Pidge,” Lance whimpered her name in pain- pain from his injury, and pain from her apparel. “Pidge, _please_ -”

The others found them before Pidge could end Lance's life, which she would thank them immensely for in later months, and they took her down in minutes.

When Pidge awoke, it wasn't coming out of a cryo-pod. When Pidge awoke, it was strapped to a cold observation table in the medical bay, stripped of her robes and placed in one of Hunk's shirts and a pair of Keith's sweats.

For days, she screamed and writhed against her bonds. Lightning crackled in her eyes and hands, and they ended up having to muzzle her so she wouldn't be able to hex them. It took nearly two weeks, but eventually Pidge slowly came around to recognize them. It was Hunk she recognized first, the yellow paladin sitting next to her and spoon-feeding her food goo through the cracks of her muzzle.

“H-Hunk?” she whimpered.

Hunk burst into tears.

They were able to unchain her a few days after that, her powers under control- _most_ of the time. During training, Pidge wore power-inhibiting gloves. During missions, she never spoke over the communicators unless she was spoken to. It took nearly another six months to undo a mere _half_ of what Haggar had tortured the young woman into. But she was almost there. She was _so close_ to being back to the Pidge Gunderson they all knew and loved.

One night, Keith was up and about with a bout of insomnia (they all had them). He had finished a small meal and a training session and was headed back to his and Lance's shared room. He had just passed Pidge's door when-

A scream. A blood-curdling, heart-stopping _scream_.

“PIDGE!” Keith nearly kicked down the door because it was sliding open too slowly. Pidge wasn't in her bed, but the bathroom door was open. Keith bolted inside, and his heart dropped into his stomach.

Pidge's eyes were blown wide, unseeing as a flashback wracked her frame. She was holding a rag, scrubbing at the tattoos on her face so roughly that pinpricks of blood were appearing in her pores. She wasn't crying, was no longer screaming- she was just _staring_. The running water in the sink was turning pink as droplets of red fell from the raw flesh of her cheeks.

Gentle as he could, Keith pulled Pidge's hands away from her face. He cupped her cheeks, kissed her forehead, and sat her down on the floor while he rifled around for bandages. Once he finished, Keith led Pidge back to her bed, one hand in hers and the other on her lower back. Her eyes were still unfocused, but they no longer held that white-washed glaze that Keith had seen in the all of their eyes so many times.

Pidge allowed herself to be tucked in, Keith's hand running over her head- only a few weeks in to her recovery, Pidge had shorn her hair down to the scalp. (“Hagg- _she_ liked to play with my hair...”) The green paladin's eyes fluttered shut, but her grip on Keith's wrist didn't lighten.

And that was how Lance found his lover that morning- crouched over Pidge's unconscious form, his forehead resting on the cool edge of the mattress as he wondered just how much more they could all take.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I want to write a sequel to this but I'm not sure how?? If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!!
> 
> PS- I have a like 15k fic in the works about the aftermath of Pidge being tortured/experimented on by Haggar and the Galra... Would you guys be interested in a long chapter fic?
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!!


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